Herbertian images are symbolic and intended to startle the reader into recognition, where the modernist image is objectivist and aims to startle the reader into new perspective. But while Imagism, like much modernism, eschews rhetoric as didactic, Herbert is unashamedly pedagogical and catechistical, within a complex intellectual tradition of Reformed theology and medieval allegory. Both the Metaphysicals and the Imagists constituted watershed moments in Anglophone poetry. This paper compares George Herbert’s imagery with the aesthetic of the early twentieth-century Imagists, whose tenets still dominate English-language poetry. The evaluative analysis establishes the pervasive reality and challenges of spiritual suspension of man in between the visible and supernatural worlds and, likewise, the idea of repetition as the inherent quality of Christian faith demonstrating that suspension can be neutralised and transcended only in faith relived through repetition. The method in use is a close reading of the poetical work of Herbert in search of those poems that help crystallise his religious conception, which will then be read in light of the theoretical work of Kierkegaard to reveal certain existential aspects of The Temple. in other terms) in Kierkegaard’s two publications, Fear and Trembling and Repetition (both 1843). These concepts were detailed overtly or implicitly (i.e. The goal of this paper is to investigate the underlying themes from this collection in terms of Søren Kierkegaard’s concepts of suspension, spiritual doubt, the leap of faith, and repetition. The current work is concerned with the analysis of George Herbert’s (1593-1633) best-known opus magnum, his collection of poems, The Temple.

The agonie george herbert